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I'm sure I'm going to regret this, but my obsession with accuracy
is at work.

Boston wrote: "The former $25 FSW membership donation was just
that: a donation. It did not purchase anything, much less FSW
Forum access (which is free, and unrelated to FSW membership)."

I generally like and respect Boston, while folks with long memories
may know I've butted heads with Davidson more than once. Even so,
my copy of the Free State Wyoming Statement of Intent reads"

"Please include payment (cash or blank money order) with your
Statement of Intent. This payment is not a membership fee or a
donation, but rather a share of the expenses we must incur to
facilitate communications, promotions, and other activities
crucial to the success of Free State Wyoming."

Not a donation.

The FRN25 was a one time payment, not a recurring subscription. If
a member voluntarily separated, I would not expect him to receive
a refund. If he he were banned, he might be due a pro-rated refund
(I think that's the term I want): i.e.- if he were terminated two
months after joining, he might receive FRN20; and call it even
after a full year. I certainly don't expect a refund, three years
after I signed up and paid, even though I don't seem to be able to
login to Boston's "readable by FSWers" link.

Thank you for continuing to publish my essays. As you know, you
have been kind enough to publish essays and letters of mine since
you got started in this job, and as any exploration of the archives
of your fine online journal can attest, your predecessors have been
doing so since the very first year of publication. It has been my
great pleasure to be a frequent contributor.

It was therefore something of a surprise to learn that it is a new
thing for me to "befoul TLE" with letters and essays only in the time
since George Donnelly got in a spat with me on his blog about the
Boston Tea Party national political party. Or perhaps it is just the
case that some people don't read much.

The claim that my letter of 28 June 2009 was in any way libelous is
a complete surprise to me, since in it I express my opinion. I don't
see how it can be false that I have certain views of certain people and
groups. It is certainly the case that I've formed those views over
many years of direct contact and personal experience. Oddly, nobody has
said what it was that I wrote which might be libel.

When I joined Free State Wyoming, as a few dozen other people did at
the time of my joining, I was told that there was a fee for joining, and
a document to sign. So I signed the document and paid the fee, and had
reasonable expectation that the membership fee was going to provide me
with membership. Subsequently I donated ounces of gold and silver metal
and cash worth thousands of dollars. No one has ever provided any sort
of accounting for any of these funds, and no one seems inclined to ever
do so. Of course, I believe all these funds were spent on beer and
racist jokes by Ken Royce.

Since Royce demands a domestic address, I propose that he send
my $25 to Ken Holder, the editor of The Libertarian Enterprise, as
a donation from me to TLE. Mr. Holder can provide a domestic mailing
address and payee for the payment. And if a payment shows up, I'll
even apologise for thinking ill of Royce's handling of the funds.

It is, of course, amusing to me that he bothers to maintain two sites
about what a bad person I am for offering to help him, for putting money
in his hands repeatedly over the years, and for doing my part to recruit
for the group. I haven't been to either site, so I can only assume that
he defames me thoroughly and provides no opportunity for me to address
any of his imaginary claims, threats, taunts, and jibes.

There are clearly lessons here for anyone who wants to get involved in
Free State Wyoming. If you are black or Mexican, you won't be very
comfortable around the campfire. If you take on a task and don't do
everything you are ordered to do by Ken Royce, you won't be welcome.
And if you think FSW is the path toward freedom, by all means, get lost
down that road. I'm not the first person he's kicked out, but I do
seem to be the first one he's refused to refund membership fees to.

In such, he conveniently side-stepped his own discredited claim of the "overt racism that is encouraged" on the FSW Forum, to indict me in particular. I do not recall telling any "racist" jokes, but whatever jokes I did tell . . . Jim Davidson laughed at. Hmmmm. Maybe he is the racist, as I "never saw a single black face" amongst his social set.

I have found it very difficult to "purloin" additional funds ever since I ceased the $25 FSW membership donation back in October 2007. Gosh, what was I thinking?! It is so vexing to have sabotaged my own "greedy" nature.

As if that weren't enough, I've also undermined my "authoritarian" bent by leaving FSWers to totally organize their own event in June. Which they did, quite successfully (sans Jim Davidson). How they managed it, with such a "control freak" as me looming about to wreck everything not under my domination, is a complete mystery. My "dictatorial" powers must be slipping. I'd reread my signed copy of Mein Kampf if I weren't so busy telling racist jokes and clutching Jim's $25.

Yes, I admit it: Even though I received no email, letter, or phone call, I now confess that I indeed saw Jim's smoke signals in the sky, read the tea leaves, deciphered the chicken entrails, and felt his mental telepathy that he wanted that $25 returned. But, being such a "thief", I ignored such intrusive communiqué.

Besides, even if I did mail (to Panama!) the $25, would our Resident Whiner ever admit that he received it? Certainly not. That is why he has resisted (since November 2008) providing me a "domestic mailing address (from which I can get evidence of receipt)".
http://georgedonnelly.com/politics/why-boston-tea-party

John Amendall is a very forgiving person. Catholics believe Purgatory is a place of temporary punishment where those who are Saved but have a spiritual debt to pay before entering Heaven pay that debt with suffering and are purged (hence the name) of any responsibility for sin blocking them from passing through the Pearly Gates. By relegating Robert McNamara to Purgatory he is expressing hope that McNamara will eventually be pardoned for all his sins and enter Paradise.

The rest of us will get to do our time in Purgatory (or at least some of it) dealing with the mess McNamara and his ilk, have made, are making, and will continue to make.

"All that man values is created by his industry..."
J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, "Political Economy," 1815, Chapter 2

"...wealth never can come in but by the produce of labour going out..."
James Steuart, "The Principles of Political Economy," 1767, Book 1, Chapter 14

"... the strongest and most industrious majority, which supports the whole society."
Leo Tolstoy, "To the Tsar and His Assistants," 1901.

"Every thing in the world is purchased by labour..."
David Hume, "Of Commerce," 1752.

All wealth is the product of labor. But we are living in a world where the laborers do not own the wealth they create. Instead, we are living on a planet where the few, idle Capitalists own the majority of wealth.

We the workers are responsible for all wealth. But we are completely excluded from owning or managing this wealth. We aren't allowed to direct how the means of production are organized, or what they're organized for. We aren't allowed to receive the whole product of our labor, since a Capitalist exploits us to support their opulent luxury. From the hours we work to the products available on the marketnobody consults the creators of wealth on how productive property should be organized and directed.

There are some who argue that workers alone aren't responsible for all wealth. They'll say that workers need machinery and land, provided by the Capitalist, to labor and create wealth. These people forget that the machinery was made by the workersand the land, itself, was made useful by the workers. These aren't things "added" by the Capitalist; they are things exploited out of their natural creatorsthe working class. It is similar with innovation, where companies steal technologies created by their employeesfrom the earliest machinery to Nikola Tesla's automobile engine.

Everything is society is created by the workers. Why, then, is it that the workers are the least benefitted from this wealth? It is because of the Capitalist system! If workers were to manage the businesses themselves, they could organize the industries for the benefit of all. Instead, we are living in society where businesses are managed by the fewso, they only benefit the few.

Rob Sandwell's friend asks, ""Will you fight? Or will you leave
the country?"

This seems to me to be a false dichotomy. There are many other
choices besides fighting in someone else's warand nearly
every revolution turns out to be someone else's waror leaving
the country.

You have no obligation to choose only one of these. There are an
infinity of other possibilities. Many of the best ideas are in
Rob's political philosophy of market anarchism, or as some of us
call it, agorism.

Many centuries ago, Etienne de la Boetie wrote that it is not
necessary for you to confront the tyrant and fight him to the death
to bring him low. All you have to do is withdraw your support and
encourage your friends, family, and neighbors to withdraw theirs.
The tyrant will fall without support, because he lacks hands enough
to beat all the street protestors and torture them in prison, he
lacks eyes enough to spy on everyone, and he lacks money enough to
pay his own bills, let alone for all the wars and social programs.

Violence has worked in the past to accomplish some goals. We had
violent riots in the 1968-1972 period to burn the ROTC off college
campuses. As a result, the war ended, Nixon was forced to resign,
the draft was ended, and we have kept recruiting for the CIA and
the military off some campuses, and there has been no draft since.
So for the property destroyed, the lives lost, and the other costs,
those riots were probably worth the effort.

Agorism proposes not to confront tyranny in the streets, but to
use counter-economics to withdraw support from tyranny. Currently,
there are free market monetary instruments which allow two parties
to engage in private trade without being detectable by any third
party. What the government cannot detect, it cannot tax, regulate,
nor prohibit.

If war were the only way, I would offer two important thoughts as
counsel for Rob and the other young warriors. First, from
Sun Tzu.

The height of skill at war is not to win a hundred battles. The
height of skill at war is to win without ever fighting a single
battle. I believe agorism is the way to win without bloodshed by
removing the economic support on which the war machine thrives.

Second, from The Who? rock group. "The men who spurred us on, sit
in judgement of our wrongs, they decide and the shotgun sings the
song....Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

The essential danger of all violent revolution is that leaders often
want to keep power. In Somali culture, the tradition is that if
the war leader wants to keep power after the war is over, the elders
have him killed. That's what happened to Muhammed Aideed, the guy
the USA military was chasing all over Mogadishu in 1993. Aideed
struck a deal to become president for life of Somalia, and his own
bodyguard killed him on orders from his clan elders.

We lack connection to our ancient clan cultures. So, fear the man on
the white horse. Or the "gun expert" with delusions of grandeur.

You are probably better off living your own life, taking your own
choices, and having no part in a slave society. Your mileage may
vary.

If you get BBC America you may have spent the last week (20-24 July 2009) watching Torchwood: The Children of Earth. It is instructive in understanding how tyranny works.

The first tool of tyranny is secrecy. the people of Britain and Earth are kept in the dark about who the 456 are and what their agenda is. Even people in on events in 2009 are kept in the dark about the history of contact with the aliens known as the 456.

This tyranny leads to the second tool, compartmentalization. Each person below the top is only given a small, often non tyrannical (though not always) task to do. Few are allowed to see the Big Picture and be aware of the evil they do.

The third is dedication to a cause. Any action is acceptable in the Cause's name.

Power is easier to abuse if it is in the hands of career civil servants who answer to no one than in the hands of elected officials.

Finally people must be convinced that resistance is futile, to coin a phrase. It may be a bluff, as the one carried out by the aliens, or it may be a fact, as when armed troops seize the children of unarmed British subjects. Regardless, people know, they just know, there is no point in fighting back.

I seriously doubt Torchwood will ever make it to broadcast American TV or even most cable stations. Even if our station managers can get past Captain Jack Harkness' bisexuality it makes people ask too many hard questions.

The Constitution requires that states extend full faith and credence to licenses and contracts issued by another state. this is why, for example, my Texas marriage is binding in California, and people who have common law marriages under Texas law need to get properly divorced if they wish to marry in New York and avoid bigamy charges. This is why my Texas teaching license is legal in all fifty states.

So what is the problem about passing Federal laws recognizing Concealed carried Weapons laws from one state being valid in the rest? All this does is bring Federal statutory law in line with the Constitution. Many states are in fact making interstate agreements recognizing each others' CCW licenses. Sooner or later someone will successfully appeal a CCW bust by referring to the "Full faith and credence" provision in the Constitution and possibly the full protection of the law provisions of the 14th Amendment, even though there are those who hate this Amendment.

The only answer I can come up with is that Senators and Congressmen don't want to accept the responsibility for taking away the illusory protection people living in states with strict licensing provisions feel they get from those laws. Ducking responsibility is, of course, a time honored tradition in the politics of representative democracy. Unfortunately it creates the opportunity for a tyrant in the executive branch to gain power simply by accepting the responsibility.

I can stay out of jurisdictions whose laws I find onerous, and far more people live by the standard of necessity knows no law rather than obedience to written statutes. However, the unwonted increase in the power of the Executive Branch of government that legislative fecklessness leads to is a threat to freedom that cannot be so easily evaded.

For better or worse it is necessary for the legislature to demonstrate an adult level of sexual hormones and pass laws enforcing the Constitution rather than let the Courts and ultimately the Presidency arrogate more and more power with the justifiable excuse that there was no other way to even pretend the Central government is trying to protect the people's rights and well being.

It's not about "gun rights" or "gun control" this time, boys and girls. It's about aligning the statutory law and Constitutional law, which is merely Congress actually doing it's job.